by Becky Akers
Washington went to the window, stood peering out with hands clasped behind. “I need a man of resources, Colonel, someone with a cool head, who’s intelligent, logical, versatile. He’s got to have rare courage and look past the dishonor of this assignment to see the necessity. You can understand, sir, I’d never find such a man in the militia or the Continental troops.”
Knowlton smiled tightly. His Excellency’s contempt for the militia, those civilians who played at soldiering and disdained military discipline, procedure, even simple hygiene, was famous. And with the unusual attributes he demanded, the agent probably wasn’t lurking in the ranks, either. He was almost certain to be an officer, of the sort who led the Rangers: clean, brave, given to firing at the enemy instead of fleeing. Knowlton’s captains and lieutenants were gentlemen who resonated to the words “honor” and “duty.” It was plain why Washington wanted one of them. They came closest to the aristocratic Virginians he had relinquished to command a mob of Yankees.
“But, General, how can I ask any of the Rangers to do such a thing? Live among the enemy, and lie, and pretend to their beliefs, and trick them into trusting him—no gentleman would agree to—to spy.” Knowlton spat the loathsome word. He would wager that even Washington, willing to do anything for the Cause, who had relinquished so much and approached nearer the gallows each day, would recoil were anyone to suggest he perjure himself as a spy.
Knowlton chose his next words carefully. “Surely, sir, we could recruit a civilian, maybe one who’s already in place.”
“Got several such men working for me now, sir. Their reports are infrequent and worthless when I do receive them. The last one told me that Howe has 90,000 men and advised me to surrender.” He turned to face Knowlton with a cold smile. “I suspect the general offered him more than we’re paying. No, Colonel, I need a military man, and an officer. This is too critical for anyone else.
“I look at the troops, they’re defeated and they know it. Then I see from the muster rolls the losses on Long Island—and sir, those are only a foreshadowing, a—a fraction of the losses if General Howe lands here, where and when he pleases....Colonel, I’m asking you as a favor to put this before your officers. If none of them volunteer, I can’t blame them. But we have to try, sir. Our Cause depends on it.”
The next morning, Colonel Knowlton surveyed three of his four captains and seven lieutenants. They were gathered in his quarters, a rickety structure that had begun life as a curing shed and still smelled of wood-smoke and ham. Its gloom deepened with the thunderheads blackening the sky, as if God Himself frowned on this meeting.
Thunder rumbled as Knowlton cleared his throat and got to his feet. The men’s murmuring ceased. Briefly, he explained the need to discover the enemy’s plans. Even more briefly, he appealed for someone to penetrate their lines. When he finished, not one of them would meet his eyes. They stared at the ground, at the walls, anywhere but at the officer who had requested that they disgrace themselves.
Knowlton laughed, an embarrassed titter that increased the tension while lightning blinded them. Thunder cracked so close some of the men started. “Ah, come on, boys. Wouldn’t somebody like to pull a trick on the Redcoats?”
Again, silence prevailed but for the rain now pounding outdoors. Then a lieutenant standing in the shadows where ropes of sausage once dried spoke sullenly. “I am willing to go and fight them, but as for going among them and being taken and hung up like a dog, I will not do it.”
Another shook his head. “You shouldn’t ask us, sir.” A knock on the door, barely discernible from the downpour’s thrumming, saved him from a reprimand.
Relieved at the interruption, Knowlton waited. A cap of drenched brown hair appeared. Then Captain Hale, wan and thin, entered.
He saluted, begged pardon for his tardiness, to which the colonel muttered, “You were excused for illness, Captain,” and sank onto the shelf rimming the shed as the others made room. Knowlton’s shame grew. It had been bad enough to speak of such a thing in Hale’s absence, but this young man, with as strict a code of honor as Knowlton had met, would despise this request and the man making it even more than the others had. Likely, Hale would sweep him a withering glare and stalk out. Then the colonel must report him for insubordination, however he sympathized with his outrage.
The men were waiting. Knowlton took a breath and resumed after another deafening boom, avoiding the blue gaze of Captain Hale. “Lieutenant, I don’t like this any better than you do. But His Excellency has to know what Howe’s planning, how many men he’s got, where he’s going to land them. If he doesn’t, he fears our Cause is lost. And that means we live as slaves, not free men, paying taxes and knuckling under to politicians. Now, how about you, Grosvenor? Will you go?”
“Colonel.”
It was Captain Hale. Knowlton grimaced, expecting defiance, never dreaming that he meant to volunteer.
Hale struggled to his feet and swayed before him. “Colonel, I’ll go.”
Knowlton gaped as he had when Washington first proposed the sorry business. Then, recovering, he shook his head. Seldom had any man impressed him more favorably than this one. He was bright, educated, personable—and honest. He probably couldn’t lie if his life depended on it. He was precisely the wrong man for this mission.
“Colonel.” Lieutenant Bostwick jumped up from his seat next to Hale as another flash dramatically lit him. “Sir, this man’s sick with fever. He ought to be ordered back to quarters.”
“I’m not that sick—”
“Captain Hale,” Knowlton said. “You missed the first part of the meeting, and you’re ill besides. I don’t think you understand what you’re volunteering for.”
“They want you to spy, Hale.” Elisha Bostwick grabbed his arm, so earnestly that Nathan winced, while the others buzzed angrily. “They want you to go behind enemy lines and be a dirty spy!”
“I know, I—”
“Captain.” General Washington’s dignified tones sounded from the doorway, quieting the hubbub and bringing each of them to his feet in a salute. “Can I see you privately? The rest of you are dismissed. Colonel Knowlton, stay with us, if you please.”
As the others filed from the room, Nathan swayed again. Washington studied him while doffing his hat to shake water and white pellets from it. “Hail in this heat,” he said with a wry grimace for such weather. He raised his voice to be heard over the clatter from the roof. “You’ve had the fever, Captain?”
Nathan waved a hand dismissively. “’Tis nothing, sir. Only what’s gone through half the army.”
“Here, Captain, sit down. Maybe you belong in bed instead of volunteering for hazardous duty.” Washington spoke gently, but the look he cast Knowlton was doubtful. He hated to use a boy like Hale. He was too upright for such duplicity. Adding physical weakness on top of that was a recipe for disaster.
“Actually, sir,” the captain said with a smile, “Redcoats seem like small fish after spotted fever.”
Washington bowed his head, wetting his lips. When he could speak again, he said, “Captain, I don’t overstate it: the fate of freedom itself rests on this assignment. The Redcoats are going to attack. I’ve got to know when and where. But more than that, they’ve planned a campaign against us, Captain. ’Tis no longer just a few thousand soldiers sent here to scare us, as ’twas in Boston. They mean to fight us as they would the French, or the Spaniards.”
“’Tis a compliment, sir, if we want to take it that way.”
“I need to know what General Howe plans for the rest of this campaign. He baffles me. He doesn’t attack when everything says he must. Then, for no reason....He has the best knack at puzzling people I ever met with in my life.” As if to emphasize Washington’s words, lightning turned the dim shed bright as noon while thunder shook the ground. “I need a man to go behind their lines, find out everything pertinent to his plans.
“As far as the details of how you’re to ascertain this, I’ll leave it to your ingenuity.” Washington took a m
ap from his pocket and untied its ribbon while Knowlton lit a lamp. “You’re a man of resources, Captain. You showed that when you took that sloop last spring. I can’t tell you how many days the mission should last or even exactly what we’re looking for. Stay as long as you’re learning new information but remember our needs here for whatever you find and come back quick as you can. Of course, you’ll need to disguise yourself somehow.”
“I was a schoolmaster before the war, sir. ’Twould be easy, pretending I was again. My diploma’s in my quarters.”
“Good. You realize, Captain, that going behind their lines in a civilian’s clothes—well, to put it plain, going as a spy, ’tis a huge risk.” He unrolled the map before adding softly, “They’ll hang you if they catch you.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And you’re still willing?”
“Yes, sir.” Nathan gazed serenely into Washington’s eyes. They were nearly the same height, Nathan just an inch or two shorter. Few could claim that, and again, the commander hesitated for so ridiculous but poignant a reason that this young man was almost his size. Such stature and his uncommonly handsome looks, marred only by that powder-burn on his forehead, would work against him, would make him conspicuous and memorable. But the general had no choice: there had been only one volunteer.
For the next hour, they studied the map while the storm blew itself east, toward the Redcoats. Washington and Knowlton estimated the enemy’s strength and position on Long Island while answering Nathan’s questions. At last, sighing, Washington glanced at Knowlton. “We forgetting anything?”
The colonel nodded. “Just one other thing, sir. I hear there’s a fair on Long Island each year at harvest time. I think it takes place within the next week or so, right about here.” Knowlton pointed to Flatlands Plain. “It draws a crowd, so you might want to attend, Captain. Should be lots of British officers there. You know how much they like a good time, and a man’s always got a loose tongue when he’s enjoying himself.”
“Good thinking.” Washington rolled up the map. “I look for the enemy to land here any day, Captain, though I’ve been expecting that for the last couple of weeks.” He smiled, so fleetingly it did not reach his eyes. “Once they land and engage us, they’ll probably beat us, unless you get word to me before that. But if not, any other information you bring will be doubly valuable in view of our defeat.
“Now, Captain, I order you to your quarters. You’re confined to bed for the rest of the day. You can leave tomorrow morning.” He paused. “I don’t need to tell you how grateful I am, sir.”
“No, General, you don’t.”
“May the Almighty go with you, Captain.”
Word of His Excellency’s request had spread among the officers. Billy Hull overtook Nathan effortlessly as he neared his quarters: the fever had slowed his stride. “Hale, wait. For God’s sake, I beg you, don’t do this.”
“Too late, Billy. I’ve said I would.” Nathan’s insouciance fell flat from his breathlessness. The short walk from the smokehouse had winded the superb athlete and pride of Yale College in the broad jump.
“You ought to be in bed, Secundus, getting your strength back, not out hunting mischief.”
Hoping to divert him, Nathan gazed beyond his friend. “Some storm,” he said. The wind had ripped branches from trees, while the hail battered leaves and flattened fields of wildflowers. It was a sad, sodden landscape, and Hull blinked as he absorbed the devastation. “Hope it lashed the Redcoats hard as it did us. Look, you haven’t thought this through—”
“Sure I have, Billy. Gonna discover Howe’s secrets, slip in there behind their lines easy as rain—Hey!” He suddenly grinned. “Gonna be Howe’s own personal halestorm, Billy.”
When Hull merely gaped, Nathan laughed. “Yep, that’s me: a halestorm!”
“Oh, for—Look, you haven’t thought this through. They’ll catch you soon as you set foot behind their lines. You can’t lie. You know you can’t.”
“I can lie with the best of them, Billy—got a lot of practice in bed these last weeks.”
Hull plunged ahead without even scolding him for this second pun. “Secundus, we’re not at school anymore, stealing pies. This is war. They catch you at this, they don’t lecture you. They hang you.”
“I know that.”
“And let’s say for a moment you do succeed. You penetrate their lines, God alone knows how, and they don’t string you up, and you discover their secrets, and somehow make it back here. What honor will there be in that?”
Nathan worried a stone with his foot. When he finally spoke, his voice was low, tentative. “Every kind of service necessary to the public good becomes honorable by being necessary.”
He was trying to persuade himself, too, and failing, and Hull pressed his advantage. “How you gonna tell your family you’re a spy? What’ll your father say? How about your friends? You want the whole brigade whispering behind your back, ‘There goes the spy’?”
Nathan squinted into the distance again, chewing his lip. Then he looked back at Hull with his irresistible smile. “I’m hungry, Billy. Seems like the fever left my legs all hollow. Asher’s cooking up one of his stews. Let’s go see if ’tis ready.” Not only his legs but his head also felt empty. If he did not sit down soon, he would faint.
They gained Nathan’s quarters. Praise Heaven, it had withstood the storm, nor had any fallen limbs smashed it. Asher’s pot bubbled merrily over the fire before it. Nathan sought his bed while Hull dipped stew onto two plates. He stepped into the hut, handed Nathan his share, and snorted. “Look at you, worn out just walking back here. How you gonna travel all the way behind their lines?”
“Who’s been bothering my kettle?” Asher’s slow voice carried to them.
“In here, Asher.” Nathan struggled to his feet.
Hull waved him back and went to the door. “Asher, I just dished some up for Captain Hale and me.”
“Oh. Well, all right, then. Long as it’s Nath—Captain Hale. I made it for him, you know, but I got to keep a mighty sharp lookout. Lots of these fellers around here, they just make free and easy with any victuals they find, whether it’s theirs or not. Sometimes there ain’t none left for the Captain, time they get done.” Asher stuck his head through the doorway and scrutinized Nathan. “How you feeling, Nath—sir?”
“Your stew’s perking me right up.”
Asher squirmed with pleasure, oblivious to the brimful bowl in Nathan’s lap. “You hurry up and finish that there, Captain, and I’ll fill your plates again. Got these squirrels here to dress out, and I’m gonna add them to the pot, so you get what you want now, afore I do that.”
Nathan nodded, and Asher withdrew to settle beside the fire and begin butchering. Hull seated himself on Asher’s bunk, savoring the stew but determined to win the argument.
“Look here, Secundus. It’s nonsense. You can’t do it.”
“Then who will?”
Hull stared, then shrugged. “That’s not the point. We’re here to fight them, face to face, as men of honor. No one expects—”
“I’ve been a member of this army for over a year, now, and I’ve drawn pay for that time, too—well, in theory I have.” He grinned, and Hull allowed himself a thin smile. “And when they have the money, they pay me pretty well for walking picket or making sure the men have provisions. Last few weeks, they’ve been paying me just to lie in here sick.”
“That’s what life in the army is, Secundus. We wait around and get sick and wait around some more, and then maybe fight a battle one day.”
“Well, now I have a chance to earn my pay, Billy.”
“Earn your pay?” Hull forgot to be quiet lest Asher overhear. “You’re mad, you know that? Earn your pay! You’ve been earning it all along. What do you call that supply sloop you captured? And all the hours you’ve spent on picket duty, and training and exercising the men? You’re not talking about earning your pay, my friend. You’re talking about dying for it. I’m telling you, they’ll be ont
o you soon as you cross their lines.”
“Oh, come on, Billy. Who’s going to suspect a schoolmaster?”
“You’re not serious. You’re going behind their lines and teach school? For how long?”
“Long as it takes. Won’t I cut a fine figure dressed as a schoolmaster ’stead of a threadbare Continental?”
Asher, gutting squirrels, cocked his head at that. What was Nathan talking about? He was going to teach school again? While the war was on? Then Nathan’s friend spoke. Asher was ashamed to eavesdrop but wary of the anger in Hull’s voice and puzzled at his words.
“Please, Secundus, I beg you, quit the army, resign your commission, whatever. Just don’t go through with this. You do, you’ll hang for sure.”
Hull barrelled out of the cabin, and Asher wiped his hands on his breeches. He stirred the kettle, dragged another log into the fire, and mulled that last comment. Who was going to hang his captain? And why should teaching school get him hanged? Finally, desperate to understand, he opened the door and peeked inside. Nathan lay stretched on his bunk, one arm thrown over his eyes, the bowl of stew undisturbed on the floor beside him.
“Captain?”
Only a gentle snore answered him. Asher clucked like a mother-hen. Taking the blanket from his own bunk, he spread it over his idol.
Guy Daggett inhaled deeply as the ferry crossed the East River from Brooklyn to New York. The salt air invigorated him after the heat on shore, though the sun seemed stronger here on the water and wrung gallons of sweat from the men rowing the barge. He had passed enough time on the ferry this summer that he ought to invest in it, had almost worn holes in the landing stairs on either side of the river. Back and forth between New York and Long Island, sometimes every day of the week, either procuring saltpeter and sulfur or delivering gunpowder to His Majesty’s army. He must be careful lest the Continentals catch wind of his activities and imprison him again or sabotage his powder mill. On the other hand, their endless labor on their fortifications and the typhus had so enervated them that precautions seemed absurd.